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Wednesday, March 30, 2016

As reported by Engadget: If you drive in unfamiliar areas often enough, you've probably run into situations where you couldn't spot a speed limit sign or were too busy finding your way to notice. However, Waze has some relief in sight: it just started rolling out an alert feature that makes it clear when you're breaking the speed limit on a given street. You can tell it whether or not to sound an alert, and even force the alert to show only when you run over the limit by a set percentage -- helpful for those fast-paced roads where obeying the limit actually makes you a hazard.

The catch? If you're reading this, you probably can't use the alerts... yet. Waze is launching the feature in just 16 countries, most of which are in mainland Europe and Latin America. The rest of the world is getting it "soon," though, so don't despair if you tend to keep a heavy foot on the accelerator.

Tuesday, March 29, 2016

As reported by electrek: A new report published today byIsrael’s Globessuggests that Elon Musk visited Israel-based tech firm Mobileye to test a new system for the next generation Tesla Autopilot.

According to Globes, Musk visited Mobileye’s Israel operations earlier this month for a “demonstration of several breakthrough developments by Mobileye in [automated driving technology] installed on a trial Tesla Model S vehicle.”

“Among the technologies are a system called DNN (digital neural network), which enables the vehicle to “learn” by gathering data on the move, and even to identify different kinds of road surface; free-space, which enables the automatic vehicle’s systems to identify areas without defined objects such as hard shoulders of roads, sidewalks, and so on, and avoid collisions and deviations from the road; a “holistic path prediction”, which enables a vehicle to select the correct path – on an open road, for example – even when there are no visual hints in the environment; and a sign identification system that can identify over 1,000 signs and road markings in use around the world.”

Tesla is expected to release more features through over-the-air updates utilizing the same hardware, but the system, which consists of a forward-looking camera, a radar, and 360 degree sonar sensors, is limited and not expected to achieve fully autonomous driving.

Last year, Mobileye’s CEO Ziv Aviram confirmed that his company is working a new system which he described as a “more sophisticated” and that could allow fully autonomous driving. He also confirmed that one OEM is already implementing it in a vehicle:

“Today we are already preparing with one of the OEM, a first vehicle based on 8 cameras, one radar and ultrasonic around the vehicle. So this is much wider implementation of the first introduction of semi-autonomous driving and the trifocal is going to be here as we planned, but additional 4 cameras around the vehicle and one camera looking back. The system will run on 5 EyeQ3 chips and all of them will be connected.”

Aviram didn’t disclose which automaker is testing the system, but he said during a recent conference that Tesla is willing to push the envelope “faster and more aggressively than any other OEM”. He also hinted that the new system could find its way into a commercial product within a year and we know that Tesla has been testing a similar hardware suite with more cameras.

Bigelow has sent up a few uncrewed prototypes before, and has made no secret of its ambitions to get larger and larger space stations in orbit. The Bigelow Expandable Activity Module, or BEAM, is a good step toward this. The 565 cubic-foot habitat will stay on the ISS for two years to further test if it has the right stuff to make viable for a longterm stay in space.

While inflatable habitats may seem like a strange idea, the idea is nearly as old as the space race, albeit never fully implemented. The first such idea, the TransHab, would have gone up early in the 21st century had it not been cancelled by Congress. However, Bigelow picked up that patent and developed it into their line of habitats.

At just eight feet in diameter, inflatable modules like this are much easier to get into space than other components of the ISS that have to be launched one by one and constructed in orbit. If the BEAM module is successful, there could be a whole lot more in like it in orbit this coming decade.

Wednesday, March 23, 2016

As reported by Little Things: According to the CDC, each day in the United States, more than 9 people are killed and more than 1,153 people are injured in crashes that are reported to involve a distracted driver. In order to reduce the 1.2 million traffic victims worldwide each year, we have to act. So, how to convince eager driversnot to text while driving? Prove it to them in an unexpected way. See how these student drivers react when they’re told they can only pass on one condition…

…The only way they’ll earn their license? “You must prove you’re able to use your mobile phone while driving.”

A Belgian organization called Responsible Young Drivers enlisted a driving school and driving instructor to be in on this brilliant social experiment that quickly went viral. Hidden cameras film the students as they try their best to text and drive. The results are incredibly powerful. While attempting to send text messages at the request of the instructor, the drivers must also avoid a course of traffic cones and obstacles in their way. The drivers brake, swerve, and panic.

“Imagine that’s a child,” the instructor says, as one student nearly breaks down in tears.

Tuesday, March 22, 2016

As reported by Jalopnik: MIT’s researches have been fiddling with virtual models programmed to eliminate traffic lights at intersections with the introduction of fully-autonomous cars, and for the first time I can easily picture how terrifying flying through an intersection with no control just might be.

Up until now I have personally been very comfortable with the prospect of having an autonomous car chauffeur me to my destinations. I still feel comfortable with what is ultimately inevitable at this point. Yet this video preview of what the MIT SENSEable City Lab and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology have been working, which depicts autonomous cars zipping through intersections without stopping for each other, paints a rather unsettling scenario in my head.

Using mathematical modeling, the researchers show how sensor-laden cars and traffic light-free intersections could reduce traffic congestion. In the scenario reviewed by the team, self-driving vehicles would travel autonomously on roads without traffic lights to control the flow of traffic. Instead of stop lights, cars would communicate wirelessly with other vehicles on the road, allowing them to travel at a safe distance without having to slow down for a traffic light.

This car-to-car communication would control the traffic flow so that cars can only enter an intersection when a slot is open for them to travel through safely. Cars would move slowly in small groups towards the intersection. As they reach the crossing, they then would slide through the intersection quickly. “You want the car to use the intersection for the shortest possible time,” says Paolo Santi, a member of the Italian National Research Council and researcher in the SENSEable City Lab.

One of the main attributes of an autonomous road network of the future is the increased productivity of traffic congestion, particularly in grid-like cities full of time-killing and traffic-clogging intersections. I am extremely confident in the technology of the car being more than capable of handling the navigation for me while I double fist two Quarter Pounders with Big Mac sauce.But this MIT video has me unsettled. With all of the computing technology of a fully-autonomous car, the simulation in the video depicts the autonomous traffic of the future having the capability to time the cars in a free-flowing network, rather than the current system of timed or sensor-activated stop light intersections.

In these slot-based intersections (SIs) Cars will move slower, but more efficiently since they don’t have to stop. This “slower is faster” form of traffic management is a well-known principle that already is being used to move crowds of people through building entrances, passageways, and other narrow areas. In the model published by SENSEable City Lab, the traffic-based system is so efficient that it could support twice as many cars without any impact on the rate of travel, claims the researchers.

Speeding up my commute is nice and all, but imagining myself sitting in a car I am not controlling, seeing other vehicles zipping through the intersection ahead of me and my intelligent steel coffin showing no signs of stopping for what would traditionally be a red light is terrifying.

Of course I’m sure the car-to-car and car-to-infrastructure communication systems will prevent a collision, and I’m sure the vehicles and networks will be programmed with mandatory speeds and distances between intersecting vehicles, but it’s still an interestingly risky-feeling prospect.

I’m still excited to give it a try. What better way to wake yourself up on your morning commute than a little game of autonomous car chicken?

Monday, March 21, 2016

As reported by The Verge: Tesla just published a blog postwith some more details on reserving a Model 3, which is scheduled to debut at an event at the company's Hawthorne, California facility late next week. But "debut" is a lot different from "launch" — the car won't actually be on the road until late 2017, a time frame that Tesla reaffirms in this latest post.

If you want to put your name down for the car, you'll need to either visit a Tesla store on March 31st, which is the date of the unveil, or wait until reservations go live on Tesla's site around the time of the announcement, 8:30PM PT. You'll need to put down $1,000 upfront to get your name on the list. That sounds like a big chunk of change — and it is — but the waiting list is likely to fill up quickly: Tesla is still working through reservations of Model X, which first went into production late last year. Existing Tesla customers will get priority, and Tesla says that the best way to get an early reservation slot will be to go into a store when it opens on the 31st — if you wait until reservations go live on the website that evening, you'll be pretty far behind the curve.

The Model 3 won't launch everywhere simultaneously. The car — Tesla's first mass-market vehicle, and an absolutely critical launch for the company — will first be available on the American west coast before moving east, eventually crossing the pond to "Europe, APAC, and right-hand drive markets."

"We recognize that everyone wants to get their Model 3 as quickly as possible. Our overarching goal is to maximize total customer happiness within the bounds of what is physically possible," Tesla says. And even if you're in the first batch — late 2017 delivery — that's going to be a pretty painful wait.

Friday, March 18, 2016

As reported by The Verge:Domino's is bringing robotic pizza delivery to New Zealand. The pizza chain today announcedthat it will trial a battery-powered delivery robot in the capital city of Wellington, describing the bot as "the world's first autonomous pizza delivery vehicle."

Known as DRU (Domino's Robotic Unit), the four-wheel robot was developed in Australia and is capable of completing deliveries within a 20-mile radius on a single charge. DRU stands at just under three-feet tall, and uses an array of sensors to avoid obstacles. Up to 10 pizzas can be stored in the bot's heated compartment, which can be unlocked with a code that customers are given when they order.

DRU is the latest in a series of tech-centric campaigns from Domino's. In 2014, the company created a Siri-like virtual assistantthat customers can use to order pizza, and last year it began accepting text message orders with pizza emoji. Other companies have looked to develop robots for delivery as well, including Starship Technologies, which announced its own (very similar) autonomous botat Mobile World Congress this year.A start date for the Domino's trial has not been announced, but New Zealand's government is already very excited about it. "This is an exciting opportunity for New Zealand... over the last 12 months I’ve been actively and aggressively promoting New Zealand as a test bed for new transport technology trials," Transport Minister Simon Bridges tells the AFP.

Wednesday, March 16, 2016

As reported by Engadget: Numerous car makers and gearheads have builtextremely quickelectric vehicles, but who holds the speed record? Not necessarily who'd you'd expect. The International Mile Racing Association hasdeclaredthat Genovation's GXE, a heavily modified Chevy Corvette, is the world's fastest street-legal electric car. As you'll see in the video below, the sports EV hit a brisk 186.8MPH (300.6KPH) while hardly breaking a sweat. The GXE team accomplished the feat in its first day of testing, in fact, so it's entirely possible that you'll see higher speeds in the near future.

Whether or not Genovation holds the title for very long is another matter. Vendors like Rimac are building electric supercars that should reach 220MPH and beyond, and it's entirely likely that this kind of performance will be commonplace in the high-end EV world before long. Still, it's nice to know that the technology for these kinds of achievements already exists -- it's just a matter of designing for it from the start, rather than incorporating it after the fact.

Tuesday, March 15, 2016

As reported by Engadget: Having to scrape ice off your windshield in freezing temperatures before heading off to work is awful. When ice builds up on airplanes and other equipment, it can go from being a nuisance to causing serious danger.

To combat icy buildup, researchers at the University of Michigan developed a spray-on ice repellent coating that can be applied to equipment, aircraft and car windshields to make removing the frozen stuff a breeze. In fact, the team of engineers say all it takes to clear off a treated surface is the force of gravity or a light breeze thanks to "iceophobic" material.

"Researchers had been trying for years to dial down ice adhesion strength with chemistry, making more and more water-repellent surfaces," said doctoral student Kevin Golovin. "We've discovered a new knob to turn, using physics to change the mechanics of how ice breaks free from a surface."

The team says the rubber-based coating could also lead to more efficient household and industrial freezers. The substance will not only help a freezer stay frost-free, but can make them 20 percent more energy efficient as well. In fact, the research effort has already developed hundreds of ice-repelling formulas for a variety of uses. So, what's expected to be the first application for the material? Frozen food packaging.

"I think the first commercial application will be in linings for commercial frozen food packaging, where sticking is often a problem. We'll probably see that within the next year," associate professor Anish Tuteja said. "Using this technology in places like cars and airplanes will be very complex because of the stringent durability and safety requirements, but we're working on it."

As reported by PSFK: During SXSW this year, people gathered to hear about a mysterious giant tube that will move people from place to place in the future. Dirk Ahlborn, the CEO of Hyperloop Transportation Technologies discussed the Hyperloop as both a completely new transportation system and also an example of revolutionary use of crowdsourcing to create an entirely new model for how companies can be made.

As people fly through the rapid transit system based on the passenger capsule levitating in a tube that travels at 760 MPH, they probably would like to look out and see the world fly by them. Ahlborn announced at the Austin-based conference that though there won’t be actual windows in this enclosed channel, his team is planning to include virtual ones in the design.

He referred to the simulated windows as ‘interactive panels’ with which you can “look out” at “motion capture technology.” This will allow you to see what it actually looks like outside. “Based on your position, we’re actually manipulating the image,” said Ahlborn.

The video he showed defined them as ‘augmented windows,’ which could show how fast passengers are going and at which spot they’re at in the loop. Ahlborn said, “I think traveling sucks… Our goal is to make traveling suck less.”

Today, the company has more than 500 team members, including Fortune 500 companies, working worldwide to build the first full-scale passenger-ready Hyperloop along a five-mile stretch of the I-5 Freeway in California’s Central Valley. “It’s psychologically really important and great to have the possibility to look out the window,” Ahlborn noted, but also it’s about a generally enhanced customer experience. The hope here is that the screens do reflect nature and the outdoors and do not become aggressive marketing messages.

As they work to build a new mode of transportation, the Hyperloop could change the way we live, travel and experience commutes. The giant, people-moving tube is the product of new thought and calculated risk-taking.

As reported by the Economist: IT WAS not quite a whitewash, but it was close. When DeepMind, a London-based artificial intelligence company, challenged Lee Sedol to a five-game Go match, Mr Lee—one of the best human players of that ancient and notoriously taxing board game—was confident that he would win. He predicted a scoreline of 5-0, or maybe 4-1.He was right about the score, but wrong about the winner. After the final match, played in Seoul to a crowd on the edges of their seats and streamed to tens of millions more online, the computer had won four games to the human’s one.

For AI researchers and Go aficionados, it is as big a moment as 1997, when Garry Kasparov lost a chess match to Deep Blue, a supercomputer built by IBM. It is much harder to program a computer to play Go than chess—the sheer number of options in every move makes the sort of “brute-force” approach adopted by IBM unfeasible. But DeepMind has managed it. After the match its program, called AlphaGo, was awarded the top professional rank by the Korean Baduk Association (“baduk” being the Korean word for Go.) And it has entered the world rankings in 4th place (see chart).

The win is another demonstration of the power of deep learning, an AI technique that is being used by companies such as Google, Amazon and Baidu, for everything from face-recognition to serving advertisements on websites. As the name implies, deep learning allows computers to learn: that is, to extract patterns from masses of data with a minimum of hand-holding from their human masters.

Technology companies are throwing money at the technology (DeepMind was bought by Google for $400m in 2014). AI researchers are impressed because, unlike many older AI techniques, which must be hand-tuned to address a given problem, deep learning is much more broadly useful. In 2015 DeepMind published a paper describing how a single program, similar to AlphaGo, had learned and mastered 49 different classic video games with no input beyond the pixels on a screen. Games make a good testing ground for AI, but DeepMind hopes to apply the technology in medicine and scientific research.

With good reason

The match proved an emotional one. AlphaGo won the first three games on the trot. Along the way commentators were convinced it had made serious mistakes, but as the machine racked up its wins, they were forced to concede that perhaps there had been no mistakes after all. The machine, which had learned from a mixture of watching humans play and playing against itself, was actually using valid strategies that its human masters had simply overlooked.

The fourth game, though, was thrilling. Mr Lee changed his tactics, playing around the edges of the board, leaving the machine to its own devices in the center. A brilliant play by Mr Lee at move 78 seemed to throw the machine: it had not predicted the strategy, and its next dozen moves were, in the view of commentators, simply bad ones. The machine seemed to fall into a pattern of missteps common to inferior Go programs which use some of the same technology that AlphaGo does. This suggests that, for a while at least, it may be possible for the best humans to exploit the few remaining weaknesses of Go computers.

The fifth game underlined how hard that already is. Afterwards, Demis Hassabis, one of DeepMind’s founders, said it had been the most stressful and exciting of all. Once again, the human commentators reckoned that the machine had made a serious mistake early on. That was the only one, though, and it managed to claw its way back into contention.

Computers are already clearly superior to humans at chess, Scrabble and even “Jeopardy!”, a punny American quiz show that was won by Watson, another IBM supercomputer, in 2011. Go had been, until now, a redoubt of human mental superiority. Yet some see this shift as an opportunity: AlphaGo already seems to have found new ways to play the game, and the best way to get better at a game is to play against people—or machines—that are better than you. Asked if AlphaGo’s play had given him new insights into the game, Mr Lee said it had. “The typical, traditional, classical beliefs of how to play—I’ve come to question them a bit,” he reflected.

As reported by GPS World: IRNSS-1F, the sixth satellite in the Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS), launched at 4:01 p.m. IST on March 10 from the Sriharikota rocket port in Andhra Pradesh.

After PSLV-C32 lift-off from the Second Launch Pad with the ignition of the first stage, the subsequent important flight events, namely, strap-on ignitions and separations, first stage separation, second stage ignition, heat-shield separation, second stage separation, third stage ignition and separation, fourth stage ignition and satellite injection, took place as planned.

After a flight of 19 minutes 34 seconds, IRNSS-1F satellite was injected to an elliptical orbit of 284 kilometers by 20,719 kilometers inclined at an angle of 17.866 degrees to the equator (very close to the intended orbit) and successfully separated from the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle’s fourth stage.

After separation, the solar panels of IRNSS-1F were deployed automatically. The Indian Space Research Organization’s (ISRO’s) Master Control Facility (MCF) at Hassan, Karnataka, took over the control of the satellite.

In the coming days, four orbit maneuvers will be conducted from MCF to position the satellite in the Geostationary Orbit at 32.5 deg East longitude.

IRNSS-1F is the sixth of the seven satellites constituting the space segment of the Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System. IRNSS-1A, 1B, 1C, ID and IE — the first five satellites of the constellation — were successfully launched by PSLV on July 2, 2013; April 04, 2014; October 16, 2014; March 28, 2015; and Jan. 20 respectively. All five satellites are functioning satisfactorily from their designated orbital positions.

The entire IRNSS constellation of seven satellites is planned to be completed in this year. The seventh satellite, IRNSS-1G, is expected to be launched in the second half of this year. The full system comprises nine satellites — seven in orbit and two on the ground as standby.

As reported by Reuters: The head of Alphabet Inc's (GOOGL.O) Google self-driving car program will urge the U.S. Congress on Tuesday to grant national auto safety regulators new authority to speed the introduction of self-driving cars on American roads.

Chris Urmson, director of Google's self-driving cars program, will tell the Senate Commerce Committee that legislators should grant new authority to the U.S. Transportation Department to help get fully autonomous vehicles on the road, according to his prepared testimony, which was reviewed by Reuters.

"We propose that Congress move swiftly to provide the secretary of transportation with new authority to approve life-­saving safety innovations. This new authority would permit the deployment of innovative safety technologies that meet or exceed the level of safety required by existing federal standards, while ensuring a prompt and transparent process," according to the prepared testimony.

Major automakers and technology companies are racing to develop and sell vehicles that can drive themselves, but have complained that state and federal safety rules are impeding testing and ultimate deployment of such vehicles. California in December proposed draft rules that would bar autonomous vehicles without human controls and a licensed driver.

Google was disappointed by California's action. "If every state is left to go its own way without a unified approach, operating self-driving cars across state boundaries would be an unworkable situation and one that will significantly hinder... the eventual deployment of autonomous vehicles," Urmson's testimony says.

Urmson's testimony says many federal safety rules would not be needed with fully autonomous vehicles, like a rear-view mirror requirement.

In January, the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said it may waive some vehicle safety rules to allow more driverless cars to operate on U.S. roads as part of a broader effort to speed up development of self-driving vehicles.

NHTSA said Friday in a report there are significant legal hurdles to allowing fully autonomous vehicles without steering wheels.

NHTSA will write guidelines for self-driving cars within six months, Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said in January. The agency last month said the artificial intelligence system piloting a self-driving Google car could be considered the driver under federal law.

Google wants to offer fully autonomous vehicles for use on U.S. roads "soon."

But it had a recent setback. One of its self-driving cars struck a municipal bus in California on Feb. 14. Google said it made changes to its software after the crash to avoid future incidents.

As reported by ComputerWorld: New U.S. solar power installations this year are set to break all previous records by more than doubling what was installed last year with 16 billion new watts of photovoltaic (PV) capacity.

When accounting for all projects (both distributed and centralized), solar accounted for 29.4% of new electric generating capacity installed in the U.S. in 2015, exceeding the total for natural gas for the first time.

By 2021, GTM Research predicted the U.S. solar market will exceed 100GW of total solar capacity.

"The U.S. is indeed the fastest developed growth market for solar globally and in 2016 will be the highest growth market overall," said Mohit Anand, GTM's senior analyst for Global Solar Markets.

One of the factors spurring growth last year and this was the impending expiration of the U.S. government's solar investment tax credit (ITC). That measure, passed in 2008, offered a 30% tax credit for residential and business installations. It was due to expire this year, and the tax credit was supposed to drop to a more permanent 10%. In December, however, Congress passed a three-year extension on the 30% ITC.

"Starting 2017, that growth rate will temper down drastically, but [the U.S.] will still be in the top five [nations for solar installations] starting 2018," Anand said.

Even as distributed solar installations have grown, 2015 saw total electricity sales fall for the fifth time in the past eight years, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). In 2015, electricity sales fell 1.1% from the previous year.

The declining rates of electricity demand reflect both a market saturation in electrical capacity and increasing efficiency of electricity-using devices. The EIA also cited a "changing composition of the economy," which has reduced the role of electricity-intensive manufacturing.

Meanwhile, Deutsche Bank believes the cost to finance solar installations will also drop from 7.9% in 2014 to about 5.4% this year. Financing for installations is expected to stabilize at around 6.5% by 2019.

The GTM solar power report, published in conjunction with the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), predicted 2016 will see 900,000 new, individual solar installation projects.

Last year, solar installations broke all previous records, but the amount was only 16% more than in 2014 with 7,260GW of new DC solar power. This year, however, marks the greatest year-over-year growth in history, GTM said.

Utility-scale solar installations will represent 74% of the installations for 2016, though residential and commercial markets will also experience strong growth in 2016. In fact, the U.S. is on the verge of its one millionth solar installation milestone.

"Year after year, we're seeing the demand for solar energy in America skyrocket, and the benefits that brings to both our nation's economy and environment are staggering," said SEIA CEO Rhone Resch. "As we gear up for what's expected to be an unprecedented year for our industry, and nation, this report reveals just how important it is to maintain smart, effective, forward-looking public policies, like the ITC."

The residential PV market experienced its largest annual growth rate to date, an impressive feat given that 2015 marked the fourth consecutive year of greater than 50% annual growth.

In 2015, residential solar power installations once again represented the fastest-growing sector in U.S., with more than 2GW added for the first time in a single year -- a growth rate of 66% over 2014.

Utility solar power also had a record year with more than 4GW of new power installed, up 6% over 2014, with nearly 20GW of new solar still in development, GTM said.

Thirteen states installed more than 100MW (mega watts or millions of watts) of solar each in 2015, up from nine states in 2014.

Almost 40% of the distributed PV capacity in the U.S. is located in California. The next nine states after California account for another 44%, according to the EIA.

California's leadership in distributed solar capacity is driven by a combination of factors, including high electricity prices, a large population, strong solar resources, and state policies and incentives that support solar PV, according to the EIA.

North Carolina also saw record PV growth, coming in right behind California as only the second state to have added more than 1GW of new utility photovoltaic solar power in 2015.

The U.S. energy storage market also just experienced its best quarter and year ever.

The U.S. deployed 112MW of energy storage capacity in the fourth quarter of 2015, bringing the annual total to 221MW. That represents 161MW hours (MWh) of power for the year.

The 112MW deployed in the fourth quarter 2015 was higher than all storage deployments in 2013 and 2014 combined. Propelled by the historic quarter, the U.S. energy storage market grew 243% over 2014's 65MW.

"Energy storage is changing the paradigm on how we generate, distribute and use energy," said Matt Roberts, Executive Director of the Energy Storage Association (ESA). "With exponential growth predicted over the next couple of years, energy storage solutions will deliver smarter, more dynamic energy services, address peak demand challenges and enable the expanded use of renewable generation like wind and solar.

"The net result will be a more resilient and flexible grid infrastructure that benefits American businesses and consumers," Roberts added.

Wednesday, March 9, 2016

As reported by The Telegraph: A computer program has beaten the world champion of one of civilisation's oldest board games for the first time in history.

Lee Se-dol, a 33-year-old South Korean, resigned the first of five matches of the fiendishly complex strategy game against the AlphaGo program, which is built by the Google-owned British company DeepMind.

The game, which lasted a brief 3.5 hours, was officially declared as a win for AlphaGo in Seoul today. Commentators called it a "superb" game that would be studied for years to come.

The breakthrough is seen as a watershed moment for artificial intelligence, a milestone potentially more significant than IBM defeating the world champion Gary Kasparov at chess in 1997. Go takes a lifetime to master and unlike chess, a computer cannot play by simply assessing all possible moves but must rely on something akin to intuition.

#AlphaGo WINS!!!! We landed it on the moon. So proud of the team!! Respect to the amazing Lee Sedol too— Demis Hassabis (@demishassabis) March 9, 2016

Well done #AlphaGo!! Fantastic game from Lee Sedol. Four more games, but indubitably a new milestone has been reached in AI research today.— Edward Grefenstette (@egrefen) March 9, 2016The game involves two players putting black and white markers on a 19-by-19 grid. It is said to have more possible playing permutations than the number of atoms in the universe.

The AlphaGo program, which uses algorithms as practiced by analyzing data from 100,000 professional human games and playing itself some 30 million times.

Mr Lee, who has been a professional Go player since the age of 12, and won 18 international titles, said at a pre-game press conference: “It would be a computer’s victory if it wins even one game.”

“I believe human intuition and human senses are too advanced for artificial intelligence to catch up. I doubt how far AlphaGo can mimic such things.”

After the game he admitted that he was "shocked".

"I admit I am in shock, I did not think I would lose. I couldn't foresee that AlphaGo would play in such a perfect manner. I in turn would like to express my respect to the team who developed this amazing program," he said.

Four more games will be played over the course of this week, although AlphaGo would only have to win two of those to be crowned the victor.

What is Go?

Go is a 3000 year old Chinese board game, making it probably the oldest game still played in its original form. It literally means "encircling game" although it has different names in Korea, China and Japan - the Chinese is Weiqi, Korean is Baduk, and Japanese is Go.

How do you play?

Each game has two players, who alternately place black or white stones on the 19 x 19 grid on the board. The objective is to surround territory - like two people dividing up a map and trying to draw borders. You score the game by the number of stones you are able to surround.

Where did it come from?

The game was thought to have been invented by an ancient Chinese emperor in order to teach his son about political strategy. It was considered one of the four marks of a Chinese scholar, along with calligraphy, painting and playing a musical instrument.

How hard is it really?

Despite the relatively simple rules, the game is devilishly complex in how it plays out. It is primarily a game of strategy and imagination, and the number of possible games is vast (10^761 compared to 10^120 possible in chess).

Defeating a professional human player at Go has been seen as one of the "holy grails" of artificial intelligence research, due to its high level of complexity.

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I have more than 25 years of experience in development, design, and mobile communications products and technology. I also enjoy skiing, hiking, scuba, tennis, reading, traveling, foreign languages, and painting. I'm an active member of the National Ski Patrol (NSP) and volunteer my time at either Loveland Ski resort, or Ski Cooper.